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posted by Fnord666 on Tuesday June 16 2020, @10:23AM   Printer-friendly
from the defeats-the-purpose dept.

Locked iPhones rendered almost useless in Australia's COVIDSafe tracking efforts:

Software engineer Richard Nelson, who was part of a team of researchers that found other bugs in COVIDSafe, has detailed a bug affecting iPhone users, rendering their device basically useless when it comes to tracking efforts.

A locked iPhone with an expired ID cannot generate a new ID. Without an ID, Nelson said the device will record other devices around it, but cannot be recorded by others.

"A device in this state will record other people around it, but will not be recorded by others. If all relevant devices are in this state, no encounters are logged," he wrote.

"One could imagine Alice packing her bag, putting her iPhone in and going out for the day to a football game. With her device in this state, nobody else will record her presence, and if anyone around her tested positive she would not be contacted."

[...] Nelson told ZDNet that if the iPhone user was to unlock their phone, but not necessarily open the COVIDSafe app, a new ID would be fetched.

"If Alice's device was locked and had an expired token, and Alice then unlocks her device to check email, for example, and if Bob's device then scans and picks up Alice's device, Bob will be able to read Alice's ID," Nelson added.

But if the device is locked again first, it won't be read.


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  • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 16 2020, @04:32PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 16 2020, @04:32PM (#1008712)

    Are you suggesting that doing different drugs make me more tolerant of violent hate-filled thugs?

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